Online Archives

Abstract

Online archives are of increasing importance in Archaeological Informatics, but like any new genre they prompt a number of questions. What is their relationship to publication? What should go in them? How should they be delivered and indexed? Can they be preserved? Whilst their delivery requires technology, we must also consider how that technology should best be employed in the service of our discipline. This article attempts to address some of these questions. The problems posed by effective publication of archaeological fieldwork have exercised the profession for many decades. The issues raised go to the core of discussion of whether preservation by record is a valid concept, and indeed whether archaeological data exist. There are different schools of thought about the relationship between publication and archiving, but hopefully we can accept that data are recorded observations but still agree that they have a re-use value for re-examination and re-interpretation. Since the 1960s archaeology has experienced a publication crisis point. Digital technology now offers the means by which the crisis may at last be overcome. It provides an opportunity to provide unprecedented access to archaeological data through online digital archives and to integrate synthetic interpretation with recorded observations in a seamless fashion, in a way which has been pioneered by Internet Archaeology. It may even allow a virtual re-integration of the paper and artefactual archives, which in the British Isles have become physically separated. However, the growth of the World Wide Web brings with it its own problems of locating relevant resources of quality which need addressing by effective indexing and access. Such resources need not be brought together in a central place but can instead be searched across distributed sites. On the other hand, if we maintain archives at a local level we must be aware of problems of data integrity. The trend for archaeological data to be captured and held in digital format, and even to be born digital raises issues of data preservation.